There are few nutrition facts that have changed our world more so than the food pyramid.
The pyramid, known now as the food plate, was and still is pure genius.
Where else can the perfect agricultural power paradigm be played out?
One needs to look no further than Oprah Winfrey’s run in with the Beef industry in ’96 to see the power of Big Agriculture.
The beef industry was unsuccessful in its lawsuit against Oprah but it doesn’t matter.
Like the Wu- Tang Clan, they wanted to send a message that they ain’t nothin’ to f*** wit!
This isn’t new and is rooted several years before Oprah’s case.
It may surprise you to know public officials and government agencies are playing both sides of the coin.
On one hand, they want to protect he people.
On the other hand, they want to protect agricultural profits.
Can these agencies serve two masters?
They can, if they give the illusion everything is for the public’s interest.
Deception is essential to play the game of nutritional facts vs. nutritional fabrications.
Denise Minger’s book “Death By Food Pyramid” clearly untangles the web of deceit and puts it in plain view.
Light The Way
Luise Light, a nutritionist, was tasked with revising the basic four.
The basic four consisted of meat, dairy, grains and fruits and vegetables.
It was introduced in 1956 and was due for a change.
Light jumped at the chance to usher in new dietary guidelines.
She and her team of nutritional experts spent countless time reading studies and other reports.
The work they did culminated in finding a diet to cease illness.
This new fangled diet lessened the role of grains and dairy.
It also added saturated fats including olive oil.
Light was ecstatic and submitted her new food guide to the Secretary of Agriculture.
The guide she and her team labored over for months came back a mere shell of itself.
Grains and dairy came back with added servings.
Fats mysteriously disappeared.
Light questioned the changes but to no avail.
In her disgust, she ended up leaving the program.
Luise’s ordeal happened in the 80’s but ithe nfluencing nutritional facts came way before this time.
The Lowfat McGovernator
Senator George McGovern, fresh off a lost to Richard Nixon in the 1972 presidential election wanted to make a mark.
After seeing a starving child on television, he wanted to do something to end hunger.
His mission took a complete turn when instead of ending hunger he sought to completely change dietary guidelines.
He managed to accomplish all he set out to do.
By chance, McGovern met Nathan Pritikin an inventor turned dietitian.
Pritikin’s objective was to end to heart disease and other ailments.
This pursuit came from personal experience as he was diagnosed with heart disease and a cholesterol level of 300.
Subsequently, Pritikin adopted a low fat diet and reduced his cholesterol levels and heart disease risk.
His diet became famous and everyone wanted a piece of it including George McGovern.
McGovern found out his cholesterol level was 350 and journeyed to California to take part in Pritikin’s program.
The program was so successful, McGovern thought everyone should be on it.
McGovern then proceeded to demonize fats and thus another vote was cast for low fat diets.
Yet the deciding vote happened way before George casted his vote in the seventies,
Keys To Destruction
Ancel Keys had several degrees but his role as a researcher would make him famous.
Keys was the father of the Diet Heart Hypothesis.
Using only six countries, he graphed fat intake to each country’s heart disease rate.
The result showed a skyward curve.
What did this mean?
It meant the more fat intake a country had, the more heart disease it had.
Keys was confident in his hypothesis of saturated fat causing heart disease and wanted to promote it.
Although the diet heart hypothesis seemed correct it was perfectly flawed.
It didn’t take into other factors contributing to heart disease.
Scientists made valid points as to why the hypothesis was flawed but Keys didn’t care.
He pushed his theory until it became accepted,
Thus the skewing of nutritional facts was born and still ives on today.
It doesn’t take a genius to see how the food pyramid (food plate) and the american diet have been tainted.
For the most part, our nutritional choices have been influenced by bad science and monetary gain.
Would vegetable oils and statins (cholesterol lowering drugs) even exist if it wasn’t for bad science?
Furthermore, we would still be as sick as we are now with these so called scientific facts err fabrications?
Beliefs are thoughts we keep thinking or in some cases we keep seeing.
Some beliefs have been drilled into us through repetition.
Mainly repetition in through various media outlets.
Those beliefs aren’t always true though through repeating them they gain acceptance.
This is the case when lies masquerade as nutritional facts.
Now its your turn…what do you believe when it comes to dietary guidelines? What beliefs do you have that might not be serving you?